The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
Armed with his 1913 Bradshaw's, Michael Portillo explores a very different Spain from the one he knows best and ventures across its border with Britain's oldest ally, Portugal.
In Galicia, Michael discovers the city of La Coruna, a fashionable destination for Edwardian Britons, for whom the principal attraction was the tomb of a British military hero. Michael uncovers the Celtic roots of the people and tries to master the bagpipes.
On the pilgrims' trail to Santiago de Compostela, Michael meets walkers from all over the world heading for the cathedral, and he is led into the archive to see one of the world's first guidebooks, dating from the 12th century.
Aboard the West Galician Railway, Michael hears how a 19th-century British railwayman sought his fortune in Galicia and ended up running the company. A visit to a sardine cannery has Michael scrubbing octopus tentacles, and setting sail with local fishermen to see if he can trap one.
Arriving at the ornately tiled Sao Bento station in Porto, he finds out about the birth of Britain's long alliance with the Portuguese. A glass of 1953 port awaits him at the city's Factory House, before he embarks on the Linha da Douro along the spectacular Douro Valley.
At Coimbra, Michael is moved by the mournful strains of the fado sung by university students, then boards the high-speed train to Lisbon.
Following in the footsteps of King Edward VII, who visited his cousin King Carlos in 1903, Michael explores the city from the Santa Justa lift to the harbour at Belem. An attempt to make Portugal's national sweetmeat proves challenging, but help is at hand.
At the Palace Square, Michael hears how turbulent events at the time of his guide saw the Portuguese royal family almost wiped out.
Examining the first half of Queen Victoria's life, biographer AN Wilson goes in search of a monarch too often misunderstood as the solid black-clad matron and reveals a woman who was passionately romantic and who spent her years as a child and young queen fighting the control of domineering men.
Queen Victoria was one of the 19th century's most prolific diarists, sometimes writing up to 2,500 words a day. From state affairs to family gossip, she poured out her emotions onto paper. Those close to her were afraid her more alarming opinions might escape in written form, causing havoc. In fact much of her writing was destroyed after her death and her personal journals edited by her daughter. But what survives frequently reveals a woman quite different to the one we think we know. AN Wilson reads her personal journals and unpublished letters and discovers the factors that shaped the queen's personality. From the tortured relationship with her mother, to the dominant men she clung to in search of a father figure and the powerful struggle that made her marriage to Prince Albert a battleground, Queen Victoria was always a woman in search of intimate relationships. As a daughter, a wife, a mother and the queen of a growing empire, as friends and family came and went, her pen remained her constant companion and friend.
Queen Victoria's journals and letters are read by Anna Chancellor throughout.
Dramatisation of one of history's most unusual love stories. Queen Victoria is grieving over her husband's death and finds herself unable to carry out public duties. John Brown is summoned from Balmoral to walk the Queen's pony in the hope that she will start to become herself again. The confident Highlander displays a distinct lack of respect for court protocol and quickly becomes the Queen's most trusted companion.
Celebrating Billy Connolly's 75th birthday and 50 years in the business, three Scottish artists - John Byrne, Jack Vettriano and Rachel MacLean - each create a new portrait of the Big Yin. As he sits with each artist, Billy talks about his remarkable life and career, which has taken him from musician and pioneering stand-up to Hollywood star and national treasure.
We each spend three years of our lives on the toilet, but how happy are we talking about this essential part of our lives? This film challenges that mindset by uncovering its role in our culture and exploring the social history of the toilet in Britain and abroad - as well as exploring many of our cultural toilet taboos.
Starting in Merida, Spain, with some of the earliest surviving Roman toilets, we journey around the world - from the UK to China, Japan and Bangladesh - visiting toilets, ranging from the historically significant to the beautiful, from the functional and sometimes not-so-functional to the downright bizarre.
Leading our journey is Everyman figure, Welsh poet and presenter Ifor ap Glyn, who has a passionate interest in the toilet, its history and how it has evolved over the centuries, right up to the development of the current design. Finally, there's a glimpse of the future and a possible solution to the global sanitation issues we now face.
Kate Williams tells the story of how an unassuming little girl rose to be the most powerful woman in the world. At her birth few believed Princess Victoria would ascend the throne, but a number of untimely deaths and the failure of her uncles to father any children meant that Victoria became heiress to the British throne. The battle between her and her mother the Duchess of Kent, however, was to become a fierce maternal struggle, as the duchess schemed to share in the power and riches that would one day be Victoria's.
Author Henry Hitchings explores the lives and works of Britain's radical and pioneering 18th-century novelists who, in just 80 years, established all the literary genres we recognise today. It was a golden age of creativity led by Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, Fanny Burney and William Godwin, amongst others. Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, Tom Jones and Tristram Shandy are novels that still sparkle with audacity and innovation.
On his journey through 18th-century fiction, Hitchings reveals how the novel was more than mere entertainment, it was also a subversive hand grenade that would change British society for the better. He travels from the homes of Britain's great and good to its lowliest prisons, meeting contemporary writers like Martin Amis, Will Self, Tom McCarthy and Jenny Uglow on the way.
Although 18th-century novels are woefully neglected today compared to those of the following two centuries, Hitchings shows how the best of them can offer as much pleasure to the reader as any modern classic.
Two days before Ana's disappearance she went with Charry to transfer the money given to her by Hector Castro to an address in Bangkok. Giralt discovers that Ezequiel Cortes has been staying in a hostel but has not been seen for days. Juan Elias is jailed for lying at his initial hearing.
THURSDAY 02 NOVEMBER 2017
THU 19:00 Beyond 100 Days (b09cc8z5)
Series 1
02/11/2017
Katty Kay in Washington and Christian Fraser in London return to report on the events that are shaping the world.
THU 19:30 Top of the Pops (b09d9ftw)
Simon Bates and Richard Skinner present the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 8 November 1984. Featuring Limahl, Status Quo, Depeche Mode, Alison Moyet, Billy Ocean, Chicago, Gary Numan, Eugene Wilde and Chaka Khan.
THU 20:00 Jim Clark: The Quiet Champion (b00jw9cw)
A comprehensive, entertaining and moving portrait of Jim Clark, one of the most talented and intriguing characters of the 1960s. From unlikely beginnings on a farm in Scotland, the introverted and media-shy Clark emerged to become the most successful racing driver of his time, and forged a reputation as one of the all-time great heroes of motor sport.
Using previously unseen archive footage, testimonials from friends, family and former colleagues, the film tells the extraordinary but tragic story of an enigmatic racing legend.
THU 21:00 Timewatch (b016xjwh)
The Most Courageous Raid of World War II
Lord Ashdown, a former special forces commando, tells the story of the 'Cockleshell Heroes', who led one of the most daring and audacious commando raids of World War II.
In 1942, Britain was struggling to fight back against Nazi Germany. Lacking the resources for a second front, Churchill encouraged innovative and daring new methods of combat. Enter stage left, Blondie Hasler.
With a unit of 12 Royal Marine commandos, Major Blondie Hasler believed his 'cockleshell' canoe could be effectively used in clandestine attacks on the enemy. Their brief was to navigate the most heavily defended estuary in Europe, to dodge searchlights, machine-gun posts and armed river-patrol craft 70 miles downriver, and then to blow up enemy shipping in Bordeaux harbour.
Lord Ashdown recreates parts of the raid and explains how this experience was used in preparing for one of the greatest land invasions in history, D-day.
THU 22:00 The Somme: Secret Tunnel Wars (b01skvnh)
Beneath the Somme battlefield lies one of the great secrets of the First World War, a recently-discovered network of deep tunnels thought to extend over several kilometres. This lost underground battlefield, centred on the small French village of La Boisselle in Picardy, was constructed largely by British troops between 1914 and 1916. Over 120 men died here in ongoing attempts to undermine the nearby German lines and these galleries still serve as a tomb for many of those men.
This documentary follows historian Peter Barton and a team of archaeologists as they become the first people in nearly a hundred years to enter this hidden, and still dangerous, labyrinth.
Military mines were the original weapons of shock and awe - with nowhere to hide from a mine explosion, these huge explosive charges could destroy a heavily-fortified trench in an instant. In order to get under the German lines to plant their mines, British tunnellers had to play a terrifying game of subterranean cat and mouse - constantly listening out for enemy digging and trying to intercept the German tunnels without being detected. To lose this game probably meant death.
As well uncovering the grim reality of this strange underground war, Peter discovers the story of the men who served here, including the tunnelling companies' special military units made up of ordinary civillian sewer workers and miners. He reveals their top secret mission that launched the Battle of the Somme's first day and discovers why British high command failed to capitalise on a crucial tactical advantage they had been given by the tunnellers.
THU 23:00 Empire of the Seas: How the Navy Forged the Modern World (b00q2ly2)
Series 1
Heart of Oak
Historian Dan Snow charts the defining role the Royal Navy played in Britain's struggle for modernity - a grand tale of the twists and turns which thrust the people of the British Isles into an indelible relationship with the sea and ships.
Heart of Oak opens with a dramatic retelling of 16th- and 17th-century history. Victory over the Armada proved a turning point in the nation's story as tiny, impoverished England was transformed into a seafaring nation, one whose future wealth and power lay on the oceans. The ruthless exploits of Elizabethan seafaring heroes like Francis Drake created a potent new sense of national identity that combined patriotism and Protestantism with private profiteering.
At sea and on land, Snow shows how the navy became an indispensable tool of state, weaving the stories of characters like Drake, God's republican warrior at sea Robert Blake, and Samuel Pepys, administrator par excellence, who laid the foundations for Britain's modern civil service.
With access to the modern navy and reconstructed ships of the time, Snow recounts the navy's metamorphosis from a rabble of West Country freebooters to possibly the most complex industrial enterprise on earth.
THU 00:00 Top of the Pops (b09d9ftw)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:30 today]
THU 00:40 The Man who Discovered Egypt (b01f13f4)
Documentary about English Egyptologist Flinders Petrie, the pioneer of systematic methodology in archaeology. Ancient Egypt was vandalised by tomb raiders and treasure hunters until this Victorian adventurer took them on. Most people have never heard of him, but this maverick undertook a scientific survey of the pyramids, discovered the oldest portraits in the world, unearthed Egypt's prehistoric roots - and in the process invented modern field archaeology, giving meaning to a whole civilisation.
THU 01:40 Jim Clark: The Quiet Champion (b00jw9cw)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:00 today]
THU 02:40 I Know Who You Are (b091gv25)
Series 1
Episode 9
We learn that 13 minutes before going missing, Ana is devastated to hear that Juan Elias is about to break his promise to stand down in the election. Giralt is questioning Heredia, who is now heavily implicated in Ana's disappearance, when circumstantial evidence increases after a body is found dumped near his summer property.
In Spanish with English subtitles.
FRIDAY 03 NOVEMBER 2017
FRI 19:00 World News Today (b09cc8zb)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.
FRI 19:30 The Good Old Days (b09dbw41)
Leonard Sachs presents the old-time music hall programme, first broadcast on 24 April 1979.
Featuring Les Dawson, Sweet Substitute, Peter Hudson, Joan Merrigan, Paul Rhodes, Julia Sutton, Eleanor McCready, Ralph Heid, Eve 'n Alan, and Members of the Players Theatre, London.
FRI 20:30 Top of the Pops (b09dbvl0)
Mike Read and Bruno Brookes present the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 15 November 1984. Featuring Matt Bianco, Duran Duran, Eurythmics, Alvin Stardust, Nik Kershaw and Chaka Khan.
FRI 21:00 Queen: Rock the World (b09d5xpf)
Behind-the-scenes archive documentary following Queen's Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon as they record their sixth album News of the World and embark on a groundbreaking tour of North America.
By 1977, Queen had become a major headlining act in the UK, releasing chart-topping albums and singles as well as playing sell-out concerts in all the country's major venues. However, they were facing an increasingly hostile music press, who had a new favourite in punk and had turned against the elaborate, multi-layered recording techniques that had become the hallmark of the band's previous albums.
But an unfazed Queen had their sights set on greater things. As the band announced plans to record their next album, the expectation was it would be another production extravaganza, but Freddie, Brian, Roger and John already had other ideas. News of the World showcased them at their most raw, simple and best, returning to their roots as a live act. With a self-imposed limit on studio time and produced entirely on their own for the first time, this stripped-back album took the fans and press by surprise and demonstrated Queen's ability to transcend fashions. It was to prove a seminal moment in the band's history.
At the time, BBC music presenter Bob Harris was given exclusive and extensive access to the band to cover this period. Conducting insightful interviews with all four band members as well as filming them at work in the studio as they were planning and rehearsing their forthcoming North American tour, and then following them as they performed across the US, Bob captured a band attempting to replicate their huge domestic success on the global stage. Curiously, the documentary he set out to make was never completed, and the footage lay unused in the archive until now.
To mark the 40th anniversary of the release of the News of the World album, the footage has now been carefully restored and revisited to compile this hour-long portrait of a group setting out to take the next step on their remarkable journey to becoming one of the biggest bands on the planet. Armed with an array of new songs, including the monster hits We Will Rock You and We Are the Champions, Queen dazzled the American audience and laid the foundations of a relationship that endures to this very day.
Coming full circle, this film is bookended by footage shot in the summer of 2017 as Brian May and Roger Taylor took Queen back to the US with Adam Lambert as lead singer. Revisiting many of the cities they had performed in 40 years previously and including many of the songs from that 1977 album, they prove that despite the tragic loss of Freddie Mercury over 25 years ago, Queen can still rock the world.
FRI 22:00 Queen: The Legendary 1975 Concert (b00p4hgm)
On Christmas Eve 1975, Queen crowned a glorious year with a special concert at London's Hammersmith Odeon. The show on the final night of their triumphant UK tour was broadcast live on BBC TV and radio, and has become a legendary event in Queen's history.
Featuring stunning renditions of early hits Keep Yourself Alive, Liar and Now I'm Here alongside Brian May's epic guitar showcase Brighton Rock, a rip-roaring version of the then new Bohemian Rhapsody and the crowd-pleasing Rock 'n' Roll Medley, this hour-long concert shows Queen at an early peak and poised to conquer the world.
FRI 23:05 Top of the Pops (b08skpzg)
1984 - Big Hits
Celebrating the big hits from a big year in British pop. The big hitters in this compilation are performed by the likes of The Smiths, Duran Duran, Sade, The Weather Girls, Wham! and Bronski Beat, to name a few.
Further stellar appearances come from the TOTP debuts of iconic Americans Madonna, Miami Sound Machine and Cyndi Lauper, who runs riot in the studio.
Frankie Goes to Hollywood celebrate their 1984 chart dominance with one of their celebrated renditions of Two Tribes, while we couldn't let you forget a little ditty from Black Lace - you'll be singing this for days... you have been warned!
FRI 00:05 Top of the Pops (b09dbvl0)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:30 today]
FRI 00:35 Hot Chocolate at the BBC (b06dl1c5)
Errol Brown, who died aged 71 in May 2015, was probably the most famous and ubiquitous black British pop star of the 70s and early 80s. He co-founded Hot Chocolate with Tony Wilson in 1970 and the band went on to have a hit every year between 1971 and 1984.
This compilation of BBC performances and rare interview extracts celebrates Errol and Hot Chocolate, showcasing their Top 10 hits alongside rarely seen early performances and cult fan favourites.
We journey through over 15 years of chart smashes showcasing all the infectious numbers - Every 1's a Winner, Emma, So You Win Again and It Started With a Kiss - and of course, The Full Monty scene-stealer You Sexy Thing, a song that was in the charts in the 70s, 80s and 90s.
There are reminders of just how many Top 10 moments they had, with Girl Crazy and No Doubt About It, the hit that got away - Mindless Boogie - and their first appearance on BBC television with Love Is Life. Hot Chocolate were that rarity, a 70s British pop band who largely wrote their own tunes and arrangements and a mixed race band who perhaps inadvertently helped foster an early sense of British multi-culturalism. In Errol, they had a frontman who was not only a great singer, songwriter and frontman, but also resolutely and undemonstratively always himself, at ease in his own skin.
FRI 01:35 Queen: Rock the World (b09d5xpf)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 today]
FRI 02:35 I Know Who You Are (b091gv27)
Series 1
Episode 10
All is revealed as we learn what really happened on the night of Ana's disappearance.
In Spanish with English subtitles.
LIST OF THIS WEEK'S PROGRAMMES
(Note: the times link back to the details; the pids link to the BBC page, including iPlayer)
A View from a Hill
22:30 TUE (b008j4jk)
Annabel's Nightclub: A String of Naked Lightbulbs
01:30 MON (b06zqb0d)
Art of Scandinavia
20:00 TUE (b073mp87)
Art of Scandinavia
01:40 TUE (b073mp87)
Beck
21:00 SAT (b06hk9yh)
Beck
22:25 SAT (b07vvsjn)
Beyond 100 Days
19:00 MON (b09cc8yp)
Beyond 100 Days
19:00 TUE (b09cc8yv)
Beyond 100 Days
19:00 WED (b09cc8z0)
Beyond 100 Days
19:00 THU (b09cc8z5)
Billy Connolly: Portrait of a Lifetime
22:40 WED (p0535lq5)
Birth of the British Novel
01:30 WED (b00ydj1p)
Bobby Sands: 66 Days
21:00 TUE (b096msfr)
Botticelli's Venus: The Making of an Icon
19:00 SUN (b070sqb0)
Coming Home: Bowe Bergdahl vs the United States
21:00 MON (b09d9cdp)
Empire of the Seas: How the Navy Forged the Modern World
23:00 THU (b00q2ly2)
Frankenstein: Birth of a Monster
23:10 TUE (b007c55c)
Great Continental Railway Journeys
19:30 MON (b05pl716)
Great Continental Railway Journeys
19:30 TUE (b05pl75r)
Great Continental Railway Journeys
19:30 WED (b05pvb44)
Hot Chocolate at the BBC
00:35 FRI (b06dl1c5)
I Know Who You Are
02:30 MON (b08zyfgd)
I Know Who You Are
02:40 TUE (b090w2mm)
I Know Who You Are
02:30 WED (b0910bdz)
I Know Who You Are
02:40 THU (b091gv25)
I Know Who You Are
02:35 FRI (b091gv27)
Jim Clark: The Quiet Champion
20:00 THU (b00jw9cw)
Jim Clark: The Quiet Champion
01:40 THU (b00jw9cw)
Legends of the Deep: Deep Sea Sharks
22:45 SUN (b06237md)
Lost Kingdoms of Central America
23:30 MON (b04jvpqj)
Mrs Brown
21:00 WED (b0078lkb)
Natural World
21:00 SUN (b00vv0nm)
Natural World
22:00 SUN (b0377t15)
Picasso: Love, Sex and Art
23:40 SUN (b0543hfx)
Queen Victoria's Letters: A Monarch Unveiled
20:00 WED (b04p1vx1)
Queen: Rock the World
21:00 FRI (b09d5xpf)
Queen: Rock the World
01:35 FRI (b09d5xpf)
Queen: The Legendary 1975 Concert
22:00 FRI (b00p4hgm)
Sound of Cinema: The Music That Made the Movies
00:30 SAT (b03b965y)
Speechless
20:00 SUN (b09cfky7)
Speechless
01:40 SUN (b09cfky7)
Spider House
00:10 TUE (b04mqc4z)
The Good Old Days
19:30 FRI (b09dbw41)
The Inca: Masters of the Clouds
19:00 SAT (b04xdpjy)
The Inca: Masters of the Clouds
01:35 SAT (b04xdpjy)
The Lady Who Flew Africa: The Aviatrix
20:00 MON (b05n29m7)
The Lost Libraries of Timbuktu
00:30 MON (b00hkb0z)
The Man who Discovered Egypt
00:40 THU (b01f13f4)
The Search for the Lost Manuscript: Julian of Norwich
00:40 SUN (b07l6bd0)
The Secret Rules of Modern Living: Algorithms
22:30 MON (p030s6b3)
The Somme: Secret Tunnel Wars
22:00 THU (b01skvnh)
The Toilet: An Unspoken History
23:40 WED (b01kxyhd)
Timewatch
00:40 WED (b00f6m71)
Timewatch
21:00 THU (b016xjwh)
Top of the Pops
23:55 SAT (b09bklkn)
Top of the Pops
19:30 THU (b09d9ftw)
Top of the Pops
00:00 THU (b09d9ftw)
Top of the Pops
20:30 FRI (b09dbvl0)
Top of the Pops
23:05 FRI (b08skpzg)
Top of the Pops
00:05 FRI (b09dbvl0)
University Challenge
19:30 SUN (b09cbcsr)
Who's Afraid of Conceptual Art?
02:40 SUN (b07w6gkt)
Wild China
20:00 SAT (b00bybp3)
Wild China
01:35 SAT (b00bybp3)
World News Today
19:00 FRI (b09cc8zb)